News has just broke that AT&T has agreed to purchase T-Mobile USA from its current owner, Deutsche Telekom. The cash-and-stock transaction has AT&T paying $39 billion in order to pick up the smaller carrier ($25 billion cash and $14 billion stock). The press release, which is currently available, notes that the deal has been approved by each company’s Board of Directors but is still pending regulatory approval. AT&T, which currently has 94 million subscribers will acquire T-Mobile’s 34 million, making for a the nation’s single largest network.

The combination of the two carriers has AT&T rolling out its next generation LTE network to an extra 46.5 million Americans, which means it will eventually have a footprint covering 95% of the country, or 294 million people. This should help push the deal through government approval as T-Mobile does not currently has a LTE (or 4G) plan established.

In the forward-looking part of the release AT&T notes that as soon as the deal is approved it will take control of T-Mobile cell towers, saving about five years of infrastructure improvements to the the company’s sometimes problematic network.